by F. Anstey
6. _Learning and Accomplishments_
"I subscribe to Lucian: 'tis an elegant thing which cheareth up the mind, exerciseth the body, delights the spectators, which teacheth many comely gestures, equally affecting the ears, eyes and soul itself."--BURTON, _on Dancing_.
"What is this?" asked Dr. Grimstone in his most blood-curdling tone,after a most impressive pause at the dormitory door.
Mr. Bultitude held his tongue, but kept fast hold of his chair, which heheld before him as a defence against either party, while Coggs remainedmotionless in the centre of the room, with crooked knees and handsdangling impotently.
"Will one of you be good enough to explain how you come to be foundstruggling in this unseemly manner? I sent you up here to meditate onyour past behaviour."
"I should be most happy to meditate, sir," protested Paul, lowering hischair on discovering that there was no immediate danger, "if that--thatbloodthirsty young ruffian there would allow me to do so. I am goingabout in bodily fear of him, Dr. Grimstone. I want him bound over tokeep the peace. I decline to be left alone with him--he's not safe!"
"Is that so, Coggs? Are you mean and base enough to take this cowardlyrevenge on a boy who has had the moral courage to expose yourdeceit--for your ultimate good--a boy who is unable to defend himselfagainst you?"
"He can fight when he chooses, sir," said Coggs; "he blacked my eye lastterm, sir!"
"I assure you," said Paul, with the convincing earnestness of truth,"that I never blacked anybody's eye in the whole course of my life. I amnot--ah--a pugnacious man. My age, and--hum--my position, ought toprotect me from these scandals----"
"You've come back this year, sir," said Dr. Grimstone, "with a very oddway of talking of yourself--an exceedingly odd way. Unless I see youabandoning it, and behaving like a reasonable boy again, I shall beforced to conclude you intend some disrespect and open defiance by it."
"If you would allow me an opportunity of explaining my position, sir,"said Paul, "I would undertake to clear your mind directly of such amonstrous idea. I am trying to assert my rights, Dr. Grimstone--myrights as a citizen, as a householder! This is no place for me, and Iappeal to you to set me free. If you only knew one tenth----"
"Let us understand one another, Bultitude," interrupted the Doctor."You may think it an excellent joke to talk nonsense to me like this.But let me tell you there is a point where a jest becomes an insult.I've spared you hitherto out of consideration for the feelings of yourexcellent father, who is so anxious that you should become an object ofpride and credit to him; but if you dare to treat me to any more of thisbombast about 'explaining your rights,' you will force me to exerciseone of mine--the right to inflict corporal punishment, sir--which youhave just seen in operation upon another."
"Oh!" said Mr. Bultitude faintly, feeling utterly crestfallen--and hecould say nothing more.
"As for those illicit luxuries in your playbox," continued the Doctor,"the fact that you brought the box up as it was is in your favour; and Iam inclined on reflection to overlook the affair, if you can assure methat you were no party to their being put there?"
"On the contrary," said Paul, "I gave the strictest orders that therewas to be no such useless extravagance. I objected to have the kitchenand housekeeper's room ransacked to make a set of rascally boys ill fora fortnight at my expense!"
The Doctor stared slightly at this creditable but unnatural view of thesubject. However, as he could not quarrel with the sentiment, he let themanner of expressing it pass unrebuked for the present, and, aftersentencing Coggs to two days' detention and the copying of innumerableFrench verbs, he sent the ill-matched pair down to the schoolroom tojoin their respective classes.
Paul went resignedly downstairs and into the room, where he found Mr.Blinkhorn at the head of one of the long tables, taking a class of abouta dozen boys.
"Take your Livy and Latin Primer, Bultitude," said Mr. Blinkhorn mildly,"and sit down."
Mr. Blinkhorn was a tall angular man, with a long neck and slightlydrooping head. He had thin wiry brown hair, and a plain face, withshortsighted kind brown eyes. In character he was mild and reserved,too conscientious to allow himself the luxury of either favourites oraversions among the boys, all of whom in his secret soul he probablydisliked about equally, though he neither said nor did anything to showit.
Paul took a book--any book, for he did not know or care to know one fromanother--and sat down at the end furthest from the master, inwardlyrebelling at having education thus forced upon him at his advancedyears, but seeing no escape.
"At dinner time," he resolved desperately, "I will insist on speakingout, but just now it is simply prudent to humour them."
The rest of the class drew away from him with marked coldness andoccasionally saluted him (when Mr. Blinkhorn's attention was calledaway) with terms and grimaces which Paul, although he failed thoroughlyto understand them, felt instinctively were not intended as compliments.
Mr. Blinkhorn's notions of discipline were qualified by a sportsmanlikeinstinct which forbade him to harass a boy already in trouble, as heunderstood young Bultitude had been, and so he forbore from pressing himto take any share in the class work.
Mr. Bultitude therefore was saved from any necessity of betraying histotal ignorance of his author, and sat gloomily on the hard form,impatiently watching the minute-hand skulk round the mean dull face ofthe clock above the chimney-piece, while around him one boy afteranother droned out a listless translation of the work before him,interrupted by mild corrections and comments from the master.
What a preposterous change from all his ordinary habits! At this verytime, only twenty-four hours since, he was stepping slowly andmajestically towards his accustomed omnibus, which was waiting withdeference for him to overtake it; he was taking his seat, salutedrespectfully by the conductor and cheerily by his fellow-passengers, asa man of recognised mark and position.
Now that omnibus would halt at the corner of Westbourne Terrace in vain,and go on its way Bankwards without him. He was many miles away--in thevery last place where anyone would be likely to look for him, occupyingthe post of "whipping-boy" to his miserable son!
Was ever an inoffensive and respectable gentleman placed in a more falseand ridiculous position?
If he had only kept his drawer locked, and hidden the abominable GarudaStone away from Dick's prying eyes; if he had let the moralising alone;if Boaler had not been so long fetching that cab, or if he had nothappened to faint at the critical moment--what an immense difference anyone of these apparent trifles would have made.
And now what was he to do to get out of this incongruous and distastefulplace? It was all very well to say that he had only to insist upon ahearing from the Doctor, but what if, as he had very grave reason tofear, the Doctor should absolutely refuse to listen, should even proceedto carry out his horrible threat? Must he remain there till the holidayscame to release him? Suppose Dick--as he certainly would unless he wasquite a fool--declined to receive him during the holidays? It wasabsolutely necessary to return home at once; every additional hour hepassed in imprisonment made it harder to regain his lost self.
Now and then he roused himself from all these gloomy thoughts to observehis companions. The boys at the upper end, near Mr. Blinkhorn, werefairly attentive, and he noticed one small smug-faced boy about half-wayup, who, while a class-mate was faltering and blundering over somequestion, would cry "I know, sir. Let me tell him. Ask me, sir!" in arestless agony of superior information.
Down by Paul, however, the discipline was relaxed enough, as perhapscould only be expected on the first day of term. One wild-eyedlong-haired boy had brought out a small china figure with which, and theassistance of his right hand draped in a pocket handkerchief, andwielding a penholder, he was busy enacting a drama based on the lines ofPunch and Judy, to the breathless amusement of his neighbours.
Mr. Bultitude might have hoped to escape notice by a policy of judiciousself-effacement, but unhappily his long, blank, uninterest
ed face washeld by his companions to bear an implied reproach; and being delicatelysensitive on this point, they kicked his legs viciously, which made himextremely glad when dinnertime came, although he felt too faint andbilious to be tempted by anything but the lightest and daintiestluncheon.
But at dinner he found, with a shudder, that he was expected to swallowa thick ragged section of boiled mutton which had been carved and helpedso long before he sat down to it, that the stagnant gravy was chilledand congealed into patches of greasy white. He managed to swallow itwith many pauses of invincible disgust--only to find it replaced by asolid slab of pale brown suet pudding, sparsely bedewed with unctuousblack treacle.
This, though a plentiful, and by no means unwholesome fare for growingboys, was not what he had been accustomed to, and feeling far too heavyand unwell after it to venture upon an encounter with the Doctor, hewandered slow and melancholy round the bare gravelled playground duringthe half-hour after dinner devoted to the inevitable "chevy," until theDoctor appeared at the head of the staircase.
It is always sad for the historian to have to record a departure fromprinciple, and I have to confess with shame on Mr. Bultitude's accountthat, feeling the Doctor's eye upon him, and striving to propitiate him,he humiliated himself so far as to run about with an elaborate affectionof zest, and his exertions were rewarded by hearing himself cordiallyencouraged to further efforts.
It cheered and emboldened him. "I've put him in a good temper," he toldhimself; "if I can only keep him in one till the evening, I really thinkI might be able to go up and tell him what a ridiculous mess I've gotinto. Why should I care, after all? At least I've done nothing to beashamed of. It's an accident that might have happened to any man!"
It is a curious and unpleasant thing that, however reassuring andconvincing the arguments may be with which we succeed in bracingourselves to meet or disregard unpleasantness, the force of thosearguments seldom or never outlasts the frame of mind in which they arecomposed, and when the unpleasantness is at hand, there we are, just asunreasonably alarmed at it as ever.
Mr. Bultitude's confidence faded away almost as soon as he found himselfin the schoolroom again. He found himself assigned to a class at one endof the room, where Mr. Tinkler presently introduced a new rule inAlgebra to them, in such a manner as to procure for it a lastingunpopularity with all those who were not too much engaged in drawingduels and railway trains upon their slates to attend.
Although Paul did not draw upon his slate, his utter ignorance ofAlgebra prevented him from being much edified by the cabalistic signs onthe blackboard, which Mr. Tinkler seemed to chalk up dubiously, and rubout again as soon as possible, with an air of being ashamed of them. Sohe tried to nerve himself for the coming ordeal by furtively watchingand studying the Doctor, who was taking a Xenophon class at the upperend of the room, and, being in fairly good humour, was combininginstruction with amusement in a manner peculiarly his own.
He stopped the construing occasionally to illustrate some word orpassage by an anecdote; he condescended to enliven the translation hereand there by a familiar and colloquial paraphrase; he magnanimouslyrefrained from pressing any obviously inconvenient questions; and hismanner generally was marked by a geniality which was additionallypiquant from its extreme uncertainty.
Mr. Bultitude could not help thinking it a rather ghastly form ofgaiety, but he hoped it might last.
Presently, however, some one brought him a blue envelope on a tray. Heread it, and a frown gathered on his face. The boy who was translatingat the time went on again in his former slipshod manner (which hadhitherto provoked only jovial criticism and correction) with completeself-complacency, but found himself sternly brought to book, andburdened by a heavy imposition, before he quite realised that hisblunders had ceased to amuse.
Then began a season of sore trial and tribulation for the class. TheDoctor suddenly withdrew the light of his countenance from them, andsunshine was succeeded by blackest thunderclouds. The wind was no longertempered to the more closely shorn of the flock; the weakest vesselswere put on unexpectedly at crucial passages, and, coming hopelessly togrief, were denounced as impostors and idlers, till half the class wasdissolved in tears.
A few of the better grounded stood the fire, like a remnant of the OldGuard. With faces pale from alarm, and trembling voices, but perfectaccuracy, they answered all the Doctor's searching inquiries after theparadigms of Greek verbs that seemed irregular to the verge ofimpropriety.
Paul saw it all with renewed misgiving. "If I were there," he thought,"I should have been run out and flogged long ago! How angry those stupidyoung idiots are making him! How can I go up and speak to him when he'slike that? And yet I must. I'm sitting on dynamite as it is. The veryfirst time they want me to answer any questions from some of theirbooks, I shall be ruined! Why wasn't I better educated when I was aboy, or why didn't I make a better use of my opportunities! It will be abitter thing if they thrash me for not knowing as much as Dick.Grimstone's coming this way now; it's all over with me!"
The Greek class had managed to repel the enemy, with some loss tothemselves, and the Doctor now left his place for a moment, and camedown towards the bench on which Paul sat trembling.
The storm, however, had passed over for the present, and he only saidwith restored calmness, "Who were the boys who learnt dancing lastterm?"
One or two of them said they had done so, and Dr. Grimstone continued:"Mr. Burdekin was unable to give you the last lesson of his course lastterm, and has arranged to take you to-day, as he will be in theneighbourhood. So be off at once to Mrs. Grimstone and change yourshoes. Bultitude, you learnt last term, too. Go with the others."
Mr. Bultitude was too overcome by this unexpected attack to contradictit, though of course he was quite able to do so; but then, if he had, hemust have explained all, and he felt strongly that just then was neitherthe time nor the place for particulars.
It would have been wiser perhaps, it would certainly have broughtmatters to a crisis, if he could have forced himself to telleverything--the whole truth in all its outrageous improbability--but hecould not.
Let those who feel inclined to blame him for lack of firmness considerhow difficult and delicate a business it must almost of necessity be foranyone to declare openly, in the teeth of common sense and plain facts,that there has been a mistake, and, in point of fact, he is not his ownson, but his own father.
"I suppose I must go," he thought. "I needn't dance. Haven't dancedsince I was a young man. But I can't afford to offend him just now."
And so he followed the rest into a sort of cloak-room, where the tallhats which the boys wore on Sundays were all kept on shelves in whitebandboxes; and there his hair was brushed, his feet were thrust intovery shiny patent leather shoes, and a pair of kid gloves was given outto him to put on.
The dancing lesson was to be held in the "Dining Hall," from which thesavour of mutton had not altogether departed. When Paul came in he foundthe floor cleared and the tables and forms piled up on one side of theroom.
Biddlecomb and Tipping and some of the smaller boys were there already,their gloves and shiny shoes giving them a feeling of ceremony andconstraint which they tried to carry off by an uncouth parody ofpoliteness.
Siggers was telling stories of the dances he had been to in town, andthe fine girls whose step had exactly suited his own, and Tipping wasleaning gloomily against the wall listening to something Chawner waswhispering in his ear.
There was a rustle of dresses down the stairs outside, and two thinlittle girls, looking excessively proper and prim, came in with anelderly gentlewoman who was their governess and wore a _pince-nez_ toimpart the necessary suggestion of a superior intellect. They were theMiss Mutlows, sisters of one of the day-boarders, and attended thecourse by special favour as friends of Dulcie's, who followed them inwith a little gleam of shy anticipation in her eyes.
The Miss Mutlows sat stiffly down on a form, one on each side of hergoverness, and all three stared solemnly at the boys, wh
o began to blushvividly under the inspection, to unbutton and rebutton their gloves withgreat care, and to shift from leg to leg in an embarrassed manner.
Dulcie soon singled out poor Mr. Bultitude, who, mindful of Tipping'swarning, was doing his very best to avoid her.
She ran straight to him, laid her hand on his arm and looked into hisface pleadingly. "Dick," she said, "you're not sulky still, are you?"
Mr. Bultitude had borne a good deal already, and, not being remarkablysweet-natured, he shook the little hand away, half petulant and halfalarmed. "I do wish you wouldn't do this sort of thing in public. You'llcompromise me, you know!" he said nervously.
Dulcie opened her grey eyes wide, and then a flush came into her cheeks,and she made a little disdainful upward movement of her chin.
"You didn't mind it once," she said. "I thought you might want to dancewith me. You liked to last term. But I'm sure I don't care if you chooseto be disagreeable. Go and dance with Mary Mutlow if you want to, thoughyou did say she danced like a pair of compasses, and I shall tell heryou said so, too. And you know you're not a good dancer yourself. _Are_you going to dance with Mary?"
Paul stamped. "I tell you I never dance," he said. "I can't dance anymore than a lamp-post. You don't seem an ill-natured little girl, butwhy on earth can't you let me alone?"
Dulcie's eyes flashed. "You're a nasty sulky boy," she said in an angryundertone (all the conversation had, of course, been carried on inwhispers). "I'll never speak to you or look at you again. You're themost horrid boy in the school--and the ugliest!"
And she turned proudly away, though anyone who looked might have seenthe fire in her eyes extinguished as she did so. Perhaps Tipping did seeit, for he scowled at them from his corner.
There was another sound outside, as of fiddlestrings being twanged bythe finger, and, as the boys hastily formed up in two lines down thecentre of the room and the Miss Mutlows and Dulcie prepared themselvesfor the curtsey of state, there came in a little fat man, withmutton-chop whiskers and a white face, upon which was written anunalterable conviction that his manner and deportment were perfectionitself.
The two rows of boys bent themselves stiffly from the back, and Mr.Burdekin returned the compliment by an inclusive and statelyinclination.
"Good afternoon, madam. Young ladies, I trust I find you well. (Thecurtsey just a leetle lower, Miss Mutlow--the right foot less drawnback. Beautiful! Feet closer at the recovery. Perfect!) Young gentlemen,good evening. Take your usual places, please, all of you, for ourpreliminary exercises. Now, the _chassee_ round the room. Will you leadoff, please, Dummer; the hands just lightly touching the shoulders, thehead thrown negligently back to balance the figure; the whole deportmenteasy, but not careless. Now, please!"
And, talking all the time with a metrical fluency, he scraped a littlejig on the violin, while Dummer led off a procession which solemnlycapered round the room in sundry stages of conscious awkwardness. Mr.Bultitude shuffled along somehow after the rest, with rebellion at hisheart and a deep sense of degradation. "If my clerks were to see menow!" he thought.
After some minutes of this, Mr. Burdekin stopped them and directed setsto be formed for "The Lancers."
"Bultitude," said Mr. Burdekin, "you will take Miss Mutlow, please."
"Thank you," said Paul, "but--ah--I don't dance."
"Nonsense, nonsense, sir, you are one of my most promising pupils. Youmustn't tell me that. Not another word! Come, select your partners."
Paul had no option. He was paired off with the tall and rather angularyoung lady mentioned, while Dulcie looked on pouting, and snubbedTipping, who humbly asked for the pleasure of dancing with her, bydeclaring that she meant to dance with Tom.
The dance began to a sort of rhythmical accompaniment by Mr. Burdekin,who intoned "Tops advance, retire and cross. Balance at corners. (Verynice, Miss Grimstone!) More '_abandon_,' Chawner! Lift the feet morefrom the floor. Not so high as that! Oh, dear me! that last figure overagain. And slide the feet, oh, slide the feet! (Bultitude, you'releaving out all the steps!")
Paul was dragged, unwilling but unresisting, through it all by hispartner, who jerked and pushed him into his place without a word, beingapparently under strict orders from the governess not on any account tospeak to the boys.
After the dance the couples promenaded in a stiff but stately mannerround the room to a dirge-like march scraped upon the violin, the boystaking the parts of ladies jibbing away from their partners in a highlyunlady-like fashion, and the boy burdened with the companionship of theyounger Miss Mutlow walking along in a very agony of bashfulness.
"I suppose," thought Paul, as he led the way with Miss Mary Mutlow, "ifDick were ever to hear of this, he'd think it _funny_. Oh, if I ever getthe upper hand of him again----. How much longer, I wonder, shall I haveto play the fool to this infernal fiddle!"
But, if this was bad, worse was to come.
There was another pause, in which Mr. Burdekin said blandly, "I wondernow if we have forgotten our sailor's hornpipe. Perhaps Bultitude willprove the contrary. If I remember right, he used to perform it withsingular correctness. And, let me tell you, there are a great number ofspurious hornpipe steps in circulation. Come, sir, oblige me by dancingit alone!"
This was the final straw. It was not to be supposed for one moment thatMr. Bultitude would lower his dignity in such a preposterous manner.Besides, he did not know how to dance the hornpipe.
So he said, "I shall do nothing of the sort. I've had quite enough ofthis--ah--tomfoolery!"
"That is a very impolite manner of declining, Bultitude; highlydiscourteous and unpolished. I must insist now--really, as a personalmatter--upon your going through the sailor's hornpipe. Come, you won'tmake a scene, I'm sure. You'll oblige me, as a gentleman?"
"I tell you I can't!" said Mr. Bultitude sullenly. "I never did such athing in my life; it would be enough to kill me at my age!"
"This is untrue, sir. Do you mean to say you will not dance thehornpipe?"
"No," said Paul, "I'll be damned if I do!"
There was unfortunately no possible doubt about the nature of the wordused--he said it so very distinctly. The governess screamed and calledher charges to her. Dulcie hid her face, and some of the boys tittered.
Mr. Burdekin turned pink. "After that disgraceful language, sir, in thepresence of the fairer sex, I have no more to do with you. You will havethe goodness to stand in the centre of that form. Gentlemen, select yourpartners for the Highland schottische!"
Mr. Bultitude, by no means sorry to be freed from the irksome necessityof dancing with a heart ill-attuned for enjoyment, got up on the formand stood looking, sullenly enough, upon the proceedings. The governessglowered at him now and then as a monster of youthful depravity; theMiss Mutlows glanced up at him as they tripped past, with curiosity notunmixed with admiration, but Dulcie steadily avoided looking in hisdirection.
Paul was just congratulating himself upon his escape when the dooropened wide, and the Doctor marched slowly and imposingly into the room.
He did this occasionally, partly to superintend matters, and partly asan encouraging mark of approbation. He looked round the class at firstwith benignant toleration, until his glance took in the bench upon whichMr. Bultitude was set up. Then his eye slowly travelled up to the levelof Paul's head, his expression changing meanwhile to a petrifying glare.
It was not, as Paul instinctively felt, exactly the position in which agentleman who wished to stand well with those in authority over himwould prefer to be found. He felt his heart turn to water within him,and stared limp and helpless at the Doctor.
There was an awful silence (Dr. Grimstone was addicted to awfulsilences; and, indeed, if seldom strictly "golden," silence may often becalled "iron"), but at last he inquired, "And pray what may you be doingup there, sir?"
"Upon my soul I can't say," said Mr. Bultitude feebly. "Ask thatgentleman there with the fiddle--he knows."
Mr. Burdekin was a good-natured, easy-tempered little man, and hadalre
ady forgotten the affront to his dignity. He was anxious not to getthe boy into more trouble.
"Bultitude was a little inattentive and, I may say, wanting in respect,Dr. Grimstone," he said, putting it as mildly as he could with anyaccuracy; "so I ventured to place him there as a punishment."
"Quite right, Mr. Burdekin," said the Doctor: "quite right. I am sorrythat any boy of mine should have caused you to do so. You are againbeginning your career of disorder and rebellion, are you, sir? Go upinto the schoolroom at once, and write a dozen copies before tea-time! Avery little more eccentricity and insubordination from you, Bultitude,and you will reap a full reward--a full reward, sir!"
So Mr. Bultitude was driven out of the dancing class in diredisgrace--which would not have distressed him particularly, being onlyone more drop in his bitter cup--but that he recognised that now hishopes of approaching the Doctor with his burden of woe were fallen likea card castle. They were fiddled and danced away for at leasttwenty-four hours--perhaps for ever!
Bitterly did he brood over this as he slowly and laboriously copied outsundry vain repetitions of such axioms as, "Cultivate Habits of Courtesyand Self-control," and "True Happiness is to be sought in Contentment."He saw the prospect of a tolerably severe flogging growing more and moredistinct, and felt that he could not present himself to his family withthe consciousness of having suffered such an indelible disgrace. Hisfamily! What would become of them in his absence? Would he ever see hiscomfortable home in Bayswater again?
Tea-time came, and after it evening preparation, when Mr. Tinklerpresided in a feeble and ineffective manner, perpetually suspecting thatthe faint sniggers he heard were indulged in at his own expense, andcalling perfectly innocent victims to account for them.
Paul sat next to Jolland and, in his desperate anxiety to avoid furtherunpleasantness, found himself, as he could not for his life have writtena Latin or a German composition, reduced to copy down his neighbour'sexercises. This Jolland (who had looked forward to an arrangement of avery opposite kind) nevertheless cheerfully allowed him to do, though heexpressed doubts as to the wisdom of a servile imitation--more, perhaps,from prudence than conscientiousness.
Jolland, in the intervals of study, was deeply engaged in the productionof a small illustrated work of fiction, which he was pleased to call_The Adventures of Ben Buterkin at Scool_. It was in a great measure anautobiography, and the cuts depicting the hero's flagellations--whichwere frequent in the course of the narrative--were executed with muchvigour and feeling.
He turned out a great number of these works in the course of the term,as well as faces in pen and ink with moving tongues and rolling eyes,and these he would present to a few favoured friends with a secretiveand self-depreciatory giggle.
Amidst scenes and companions like these, Paul sat out the evening hourson his hard seat, which was just at the junction of two forms--anexquisitely uncomfortable position, as all who have tried it willacknowledge--until the time for going to bed came round again. Hedreaded the hours of darkness, but there was no help for it--to protestwould have been madness just then, and, once more, he was forced to passa night under the roof of Crichton House.
It was even worse than the first, though this was greatly owing to hisown obstinacy.
The boys, if less subdued, were in better temper than the eveningbefore, and found it troublesome to keep up a feud when the first flushof resentment had died out. There was a general disposition to forgethis departure from the code of schoolboy honour, and give him anopportunity of retrieving the past.
But he would not meet them half-way; his repeated repulses by the Doctorand all the difficulties that beset his return to freedom had made himvery sulky and snappish. He had not patience or adaptability enough torespond to their advances, and only shrank from their rough goodnature--which naturally checked the current of good feeling.
Then, when the lights were put out, some one demanded a story. Most ofthe bedrooms possessed a professional story-teller, and in one there wasa young romancist who began a stirring history the very first night ofthe term, which always ran on until the night before the holidays, and,if his hearers were apt to yawn at the sixth week of it, he himselfenjoyed and believed in it keenly from beginning to end.
Dick Bultitude had been a valued _raconteur_, it appeared, and hisfather found accordingly, to his disgust, that he was expected to amusethem with a story. When he clearly understood the idea, he rejected itwith so savage a snarl, that he soon found it necessary to retire underthe bedclothes to escape the general indignation that followed.
Finding that he did not actively resent it (the real Dick would have hadthe occupant of the nearest bed out by the ears in a minute!), theyprofited by his prudence to come to his bedside, where they pillowed hisweary head (with their own pillows) till the slight offered them wasmore than avenged.
After that, Mr. Bultitude, with the breath half beaten out of his body,lay writhing and spluttering on his hard, rough bed till long aftersilence had fallen over the adjoining beds, and the sleepy hum of talkin the other bedrooms had died away.
Then he, too, drifted off into wild and troubled dreams, which, at theirmaddest, were scattered into blankness by a sudden and violent shock,which jerked him, clutching and grasping at nothing, on to the cold,bare boards, where he rolled, shivering.
"An earthquake!" he thought, "an explosion ... gas--or dynamite! He mustgo and call the children ... Boaler ... the plate!"
But the reality to which he woke was worse still. Tipping and Coker hadbeen patiently pinching themselves to keep awake until their enemyshould be soundly asleep, in order to enjoy the exquisite pleasure ofletting down the mattress; and, too dazed and frightened even to swear,Paul gathered up his bedclothes and tried to draw them about him as wellas he might, and seek sleep, which had lost its security.
The Garuda Stone had done one grim and cruel piece of work at least inits time.